Crap, I was already afraid you would ask that question so I would have to read it all again ^^

Taugrim says glyph of WoG (increases WoG healing by 10%) is mandatory, but it should be noted that this depends on your setup. I am running with a healer (which isnt ideal) so I got 3 damage boosting glyphs.

Seal of Light IS usefull for a short duration to get your mana back when you canceled Divine Plea for a WoG (/cancelaura) if you are playing against a composition who cant make you block so you dont get your mana back from that and you are using your heals/AoE. Besides that its a very usefull seal in PvE, I use it most of the time when chainpulling heroics. (Taugrim says its just crap to use EVER (PvE and PvP), I find it has situational benefits over SoT in PvE and PvP).

Seal of Judgement has some uses (ghostwolf, travelform).

As far as his spec goes: Divine Guardian is kinda lame in 2s, but I can see him takeing it since his shaman has no shieldwall-like abilities. It acts like a Divine Protecion for his ally. Hallowed Grounds is lame too anyway. For the rest it looks the same.

Furthermore I dont agree that yellow sockets are best used to put resilience in it. 20 res and 20 something else to get a socketbonus okay, but I would prefer a critgem over a resilience gem anyway. I am at 3387 resilience and I found myself in need of crit more often then in need of resilience.

About his part on trinkets: The "use" trinket is so much more valuable because thats where prot paladins shine in PvP. Its on 2 minute cooldown and can be paired with wings. Taking the "chance on hit" trinket is a big mistake if you ask me unless you are a Human and dont need an Insignia of the Alliance/Horde.

On the metagem: Requirements of Chaotic will be fixed to 2 blues minimum soon.

Some of the macro's are unneeded, but it depends on your UI if they are usefull or not. To me most aren't.

Thank you for the link to Taugrim's blog. That was awesome and concise. I may have to spec specifically for PvP, now... I hope I can live without Ret spec. We'll see.

My question is about gear. Right now I am mostly in crafted gear, with two honor pieces (hands,cloak?) and the conquest point shoulders. I don't PvP often, so I don't have a massive honor point income right now -- mainly because I get on and raid or do dungeons instead of PvP, most nights. Should I fill out the Set Pieces first, regardless of blue/purple-ness, or should I spend my Conquest points on set pieces and Honor points on non-set pieces? I'm leaning towards the former, since it gets me the 4-piece bonus sooner, but it makes me cry a little to think that I'll be replacing the blue set pieces with purples eventually.

Also, right now I'm sticking with my Lava Spine + Elementium Earthguard, despite there being PvP ones I could buy, since they're basically clones of the PvP ones, aside from resilience itemization. I think that's a solid plan, since the weapon DPS and max damage are the same on the pvp weapons.

I wonder if I can get my partner to pvp on his DK instead of his hunter. Probably not, which makes some of the reverse kiting that Taugrim talks about more challenging.

edit: on the matter of honor farming ... what's a good way to do that? I tried running random BGs, but the extra honor doesn't matter if our team doesn't win. =/ Are any of the maps well suited towards alliance, or to my role as a paladin? (CTF maps seemed to work wellsome of the time, but other times it's just an exercise in Who has A Healer. )

He is pretty much the authority on Prot PVP. Has gotten nearly 2200 this season running with an enh shaman.

We're around 2040 atm in 2v2, and I don't expect we'll get to 2200 due to the high number of Mage/xxx or DK/xxx comps.

Mages are nuts in PVP now, they have high DPS, high survivability, and high CC. Mage really feels like two classes worth of special abilities LOL. We run into Mage comps back-to-back-to-back in 2v2 and if the Mage is competent and decently geared they should beat us. It makes scaling the ladder difficult.

We just started 3v3 this week and broke 2k in 61 games. We haven't hit our ceiling yet

Sleetza wrote:Taugrim says glyph of WoG (increases WoG healing by 10%) is mandatory, but it should be noted that this depends on your setup. I am running with a healer (which isnt ideal) so I got 3 damage boosting glyphs.

Are you talking 2v2 only? I end up offhealing a ton in both 2v2 and 3v3.

Sleetza wrote:Seal of Light IS usefull for a short duration to get your mana back when you canceled Divine Plea for a WoG (/cancelaura) if you are playing against a composition who cant make you block so you dont get your mana back from that and you are using your heals/AoE

You can switch to SoI to get mana back faster, although I tend to use my cooldowns in PVP on abilities instead of Seal rotating.

In 4.0.6 with the buffs to SoT, SoT will be even better.

Sleetza wrote:Besides that its a very usefull seal in PvE, I use it most of the time when chainpulling heroics. (Taugrim says its just crap to use EVER (PvE and PvP), I find it has situational benefits over SoT in PvE and PvP).

FYI.

You want the Expertise bonus from glyphed SoT, because you don't want a boss/mob to parry because it will get an immediate attack back on you. I'm not alone on this one, most PVE raid tanks are running glyphed SoT for boss and trash pulls:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1020823291

The heal from SoI is quite small, only procs from some of our attacks (auto-attacks), and isn't a guaranteed proc. In PVE mana management with Judgement isn't an issue and you won't be spam casting FoL except situationally.

Sleetza wrote:Seal of Judgement has some uses (ghostwolf, travelform).

Absolutely.

Sleetza wrote:As far as his spec goes: Divine Guardian is kinda lame in 2s, but I can see him takeing it since his shaman has no shieldwall-like abilities. It acts like a Divine Protecion for his ally. Hallowed Grounds is lame too anyway. For the rest it looks the same.

I tried 1/2 Reckoning and 0/1 DG, and I was really disappointed with the meager DPS increase from Reckoning. It's too bad it doesn't proc off our attacks like it did in 3.x.

Sleetza wrote:Furthermore I dont agree that yellow sockets are best used to put resilience in it. 20 res and 20 something else to get a socketbonus okay, but I would prefer a critgem over a resilience gem anyway. I am at 3387 resilience and I found myself in need of crit more often then in need of resilience.

I run with: Str, Str/Crit, and Str/Hit gems. No Resil - what I have from gear and socket bonuses is sufficient.

Sleetza wrote:About his part on trinkets: The "use" trinket is so much more valuable because thats where prot paladins shine in PvP. Its on 2 minute cooldown and can be paired with wings. Taking the "chance on hit" trinket is a big mistake if you ask me unless you are a Human and dont need an Insignia of the Alliance/Horde.

You can't use Wings in a lot of Arena at least due to the number of Mage comps. I have both trinkets and I prefer Insignia over Badge for Prot. For other specs, I'd prefer Badge (e.g. like my partner the Enh Shaman).

Sleetza wrote:Some of the macro's are unneeded, but it depends on your UI if they are usefull or not. To me most aren't.

Macros/keybinds are highly user-preference dependent. I have found a setup that allows fluid movement in most situations while allowing me to use skills on-the-move.

Let me know what other thoughts you have around Prot PVP. Always interested to hear people's perspective.

taugrim wrote:You want the Expertise bonus from glyphed SoT, because you don't want a boss/mob to parry because it will get an immediate attack back on you.

The heal from SoI is quite small, only procs from some of our attacks (auto-attacks), and isn't a guaranteed proc. In PVE mana management with Judgement isn't an issue and you won't be spam casting FoL except situationally.

This is offtopic for the PvP discussion, but ... We have not confirmed that any bosses actually get hasted attacks when they parry: http://maintankadin.failsafedesign.com/forum/index.php?f=6&t=27934&rb_v=viewtopic If they don't actually get hasted attacks from parries, Expertise is purely a threat stat. Also, SoI may be low amounts of healing, but did 15% of my healing taken on the last Omitron fight, more than any other heal (by any healer) other than Word of Glory and my holy paladin's Divine Light. Last week, it healed as much as earth shield and more than Rejuv. It's powerful in PvE.

I run with: Str, Str/Crit, and Str/Hit gems. No Resil - what I have from gear and socket bonuses is sufficient.

I'm inclined to think the same; a gear upgrade from crafted -> honor, or honor->conquest, is more resilience than a gem, and people tend to focus my partner before me anyways, which means that my meager damage contribution is something I think I want to maximize.

Thanks a ton for your guide. I have it pinned in my browser at home and at work. (: Do you have any tactical suggestions for Prot/Hunter? We can't reverse kite or pillar-hump the way you and your shaman do, and I realize that the synergy isn't that good.

It's absolutely fantastic in battlegrounds. Hit the center of crap, target a pet (yes, pet, not player) and start spamming HoTR for absurd AoE damage. Healers hate evenly spread damage all over the place. If you manage to make the opponents angry enough at you they'll actually follow you into a corner. I never imagined it was possible to tank players. This works surprisingly well in TB as well (even though you tend to get overwhelmed faster there when people decide to get rid of you).

It works so-so in arena (2v2 only, haven't triend anything else). So, I've only done the games needed to cap CP those last weeks, but it's rather clear that casters eat me and my PvE-geared surv-hunter for breakfast. Melee (unless said hunter is killed) do little to no damage at all. However, do NOT, repeat NOT, face off against another prot pally. After some 40 minutes the match ends automatically with neither team getting anything. Around 50% win, but I guess we're meeting equally crappy teams as ourselves.

Gárrosh wrote:You have rung a bell which cannot be unrung. Gladiator Astral and The Scum Cleave are an unstoppable juggernaut of oppression. Can you stop an unstoppable juggernaut of oppression? No you can't it's unstoppable.

yappo wrote:do NOT, repeat NOT, face off against another prot pally. After some 40 minutes the match ends automatically...

I've had good track record vs other paladins. I think I used SoI for healing, and hammered him repeatedly; good AS proc luck helped too. I probably had more resilience than he did, which meant that he was taking more damage than I was, but I also used all of my damage reduction cooldowns.

yappo wrote:do NOT, repeat NOT, face off against another prot pally. After some 40 minutes the match ends automatically...

I've had good track record vs other paladins. I think I used SoI for healing, and hammered him repeatedly; good AS proc luck helped too. I probably had more resilience than he did, which meant that he was taking more damage than I was, but I also used all of my damage reduction cooldowns.

So basically luck and a poorly geared opponent.

I'm afraid I was the 'poorly' geared pally in that match. Poor meaning well over 3200 resilience. We just couldn't get the other anywhere close to actual killing range.

taugrim wrote:Mages are nuts in PVP now... if the Mage is competent and decently geared they should beat us.

Last night I was trying to get my 3's healer some extra matches, so I went into 2v2 with Prot+restodruid. One match was versus Mage/Disc. My partner died extremely fast, as she has nearly no resilience, but I proceeded to stay alive for something near another five minutes - had I been able to keep the healer in combat, I would have been able to prevent them drinking.

How well would Prot/Holy work (both paladins)? Holy seems to have some decent burst, when healing isn't critical, and our druid was thinking that swapping to paladin might make our 3s (Prot/hunter/[druid|paladin]) easier. She's starting at zero resilience for each of them, so it might be moot for a while, but I'm curious what you think.

Sleetza wrote:Taugrim says glyph of WoG (increases WoG healing by 10%) is mandatory, but it should be noted that this depends on your setup. I am running with a healer (which isnt ideal) so I got 3 damage boosting glyphs.

Are you talking 2v2 only? I end up offhealing a ton in both 2v2 and 3v3.

Yes I talked mainly about 2v2 because thats where most of my experience comes from. I do end up offhealing sometimes, altho I run with a restodruid. The times I could have used that little extra burst from a damage-glyph occur much more often then situations where that 10% WoG-healing would have saved my healer. And apart from that, if its needed we made a mistake to get him in that position most likely (LoS, positioning, unstealthing).

taugrim wrote:

Sleetza wrote:Seal of Light IS usefull for a short duration to get your mana back when you canceled Divine Plea for a WoG (/cancelaura) if you are playing against a composition who cant make you block so you dont get your mana back from that and you are using your heals/AoE

You can switch to SoI to get mana back faster, although I tend to use my cooldowns in PVP on abilities instead of Seal rotating.

In 4.0.6 with the buffs to SoT, SoT will be even better.

Are you referring to global cooldowns? I am not sure what you are referring to here. I sometimes swap seals when I am chasing somebody, to me its not worth the global cooldown either. For damage SoT is obviously king of the hill but there are times where other seals have their uses.

taugrim wrote:

Sleetza wrote:Besides that its a very usefull seal in PvE, I use it most of the time when chainpulling heroics. (Taugrim says its just crap to use EVER (PvE and PvP), I find it has situational benefits over SoT in PvE and PvP).

FYI.

You want the Expertise bonus from glyphed SoT, because you don't want a boss/mob to parry because it will get an immediate attack back on you. I'm not alone on this one, most PVE raid tanks are running glyphed SoT for boss and trash pulls:http://us.battle.net/wow/en/forum/topic/1020823291

The heal from SoI is quite small, only procs from some of our attacks (auto-attacks), and isn't a guaranteed proc. In PVE mana management with Judgement isn't an issue and you won't be spam casting FoL except situationally.

Mobs parrying isnt an issue as long as long as you dont bring either undergeared or underskilled players. And if you bring those you shouldn't chainpull heroics. When chainpulling I dont prioritize Judgement. And if I use divine plea at the start for the holy power and thus is on cooldown when I could use it for manaregen I sometimes endup going OOM when solotanking heroic bosses. Especially slow attacking ones. Bottomline: I use SoL mostly for manareturns if I endup going OOM somehow or when shit hits the fan (soloing Altairus on heroic mode comes to mind lol).

taugrim wrote:

Sleetza wrote:As far as his spec goes: Divine Guardian is kinda lame in 2s, but I can see him takeing it since his shaman has no shieldwall-like abilities. It acts like a Divine Protecion for his ally. Hallowed Grounds is lame too anyway. For the rest it looks the same.

I tried 1/2 Reckoning and 0/1 DG, and I was really disappointed with the meager DPS increase from Reckoning. It's too bad it doesn't proc off our attacks like it did in 3.x.

The Divine Protection for our allies is probably more usefull then the small dpsboost is. Altho I tend to go with reckoning for the same reason I dont use glyph of WoG. Not 100% convinced for either talent tho, especially in 2v2. In 3v3 its already like two Divine Protections and in 5v5 its like 4.

taugrim wrote:

Sleetza wrote:Furthermore I dont agree that yellow sockets are best used to put resilience in it. 20 res and 20 something else to get a socketbonus okay, but I would prefer a critgem over a resilience gem anyway. I am at 3387 resilience and I found myself in need of crit more often then in need of resilience.

I run with: Str, Str/Crit, and Str/Hit gems. No Resil - what I have from gear and socket bonuses is sufficient.

I was referring to the part in your prot pally pvp guide where you recommend 40 res gems too. I could see the use for it when you are still gearing up and dont have all pvpgear yet but str/crit or str/hit is the way to go.

taugrim wrote:

Sleetza wrote:About his part on trinkets: The "use" trinket is so much more valuable because thats where prot paladins shine in PvP. Its on 2 minute cooldown and can be paired with wings. Taking the "chance on hit" trinket is a big mistake if you ask me unless you are a Human and dont need an Insignia of the Alliance/Horde.

You can't use Wings in a lot of Arena at least due to the number of Mage comps. I have both trinkets and I prefer Insignia over Badge for Prot. For other specs, I'd prefer Badge (e.g. like my partner the Enh Shaman).

Tbh I never had my Wings gotten spellstolen yet. But you are probably less in need of more damage because you are running with a dps-shammie. I am running with a healer so the burstdamage is all we got since our damage is lower then warrior's for example. Most of our 2v2 matches are won by bursting down people while the restodruid/HoJ keeps the other guy CC'ed while I pop my cooldowns on my target. And even thats RNG, no crits no kills mostly.

taugrim wrote:Let me know what other thoughts you have around Prot PVP. Always interested to hear people's perspective.

- Tau

I really find it awesome you take time to talk with the community and not just stand there on your soapbox shouting down whats best. Together we'll improve. /highfive

Kelaan wrote:How well would Prot/Holy work (both paladins)? Holy seems to have some decent burst, when healing isn't critical, and our druid was thinking that swapping to paladin might make our 3s (Prot/hunter/[druid|paladin]) easier. She's starting at zero resilience for each of them, so it might be moot for a while, but I'm curious what you think.

Running with a holy paladin could be viable I think but it wouldn't be my choice. Its basically the same as resto/prot as I am playing currently but restodruids have good CC-abilities holy/prot paladins lack. Exorsismspam is nice tho, but thats the same as wrathspam I believe. It might get interesting when Rebuke gets baseline, two paladins could pretty much spelllock a healer/caster till death.

Yeah ... for a beginning pvp healer, it sounds like druid might be easier -- with cyclone, roots, and shifting. How does your druid play? Start off stealthed? Do they attack in cat form, ever, or just pop out straight into healing? 3s are seeming to be brutal, in that two DPS can beat down either of my partners and I can't really do much about it, and then it's 3v2 and again, two DPS is more than I can handle, esp when they have a healer.

Do you guys have any suggestions? We all three are pretty much noobs at pvp, but I feel like there's not much I can do for my hunter or druid. HoP doesn't last long, and so forth.

I'd be interested to hear how people are finding Prot PvP after the 4.06 patch. From PvE, it seems our damage has gone up. But for PvP, I wonder if CS/HotR misses not generating HoPo will nerf us - given that players often seem to have higher avoidance than mobs? And I wonder how Darkmoon Card: Hurricane looks now.

Kelaan wrote:Yeah ... for a beginning pvp healer, it sounds like druid might be easier -- with cyclone, roots, and shifting. How does your druid play? Start off stealthed? Do they attack in cat form, ever, or just pop out straight into healing? 3s are seeming to be brutal, in that two DPS can beat down either of my partners and I can't really do much about it, and then it's 3v2 and again, two DPS is more than I can handle, esp when they have a healer.

Do you guys have any suggestions? We all three are pretty much noobs at pvp, but I feel like there's not much I can do for my hunter or druid. HoP doesn't last long, and so forth.

All those abilities doesnt exactly make a class easier to play in my opinion But a paladin has plenty of stuff to do other then healing too (HoS, HoP, Hoj, Cleanse, Excorsism spam etc.). The shifting/travelform makes it easier to stay alive while undergeared probably. My resto starts off stealthed and pops out when I need heals or to burst the last 20% of someones hp. Havent seen him doing much kitty.

econ21 wrote:I'd be interested to hear how people are finding Prot PvP after the 4.06 patch. From PvE, it seems our damage has gone up. But for PvP, I wonder if CS/HotR misses not generating HoPo will nerf us - given that players often seem to have higher avoidance than mobs? And I wonder how Darkmoon Card: Hurricane looks now.

In PvP its easy enough to get hitcapped. In PvE however it will make hitrating more valuable then it was before (before it was so unneeded). Getting CS on cooldown without a holy power generated can seriously screwup your rotation I guess...

econ21 wrote:I'd be interested to hear how people are finding Prot PvP after the 4.06 patch. From PvE, it seems our damage has gone up. But for PvP, I wonder if CS/HotR misses not generating HoPo will nerf us - given that players often seem to have higher avoidance than mobs? And I wonder how Darkmoon Card: Hurricane looks now.

Given that I grabbed (almost) 5% hit and 20 expertize out of routine (think threat-set) I can't say I've noticed anything but my damage going up.

CS/HotR change has only impacted my tanking in any measurable way, which obviously is a different thread.

It does raise the question of player avoidance in PvP: I meet L85 hit and exp caps, but it seems some classes have stuff that makes them a little more slippery to land a blow on.

If my target has 20 - 30% avoidance, then my target is walking around in PvE tank gear and is already dead before the fight started due to severe lack of resilience.

The 5% miss is voided by 5% hit. Thus the poster claims he's up against targets with 10/10 - 15/15% parry/dodge. The latter would be in 359 tank gear dumping mastery in favour of avoidance.

Let's have a look at my own prot-pally in PvP gear. He has an astounding 3.98% dodge and 9.90% parry, let's say 14% avoidance. The SoT glyph alone would shave 2.5% off each, and as gear gets better I'll have a hard time staying at 20 expertise or below from gear only.

However, he implicitly highlights that 20 expertise unbuffed might indeed be a tad low. Softcapping ought to be the biggest boost to our sustained dps even in PvP, so I think I'll aim for good old 26

I've been doing some fairly casual pvp as prot with an arms warrior and I've found it to be very fun but possibly not super competitive. I'm at around 2700 resilience and my warrior is at 3300. We play the minimum number of games each week and we're currently floating around the 1550-1600 rating area. What we find is that if I use most of my holy power on healing we can actually last quite a long time, we've even got some kills on 1healer/1dps teams by gradually ooming the healer. The fights we struggle the most with are against skilled double dps teams (normally including a mage) and highly geared melee/healer teams especially DK/druids.

I think our main challenge is just learning how to effectively "reverse kite" teams around pillars to make sure we fight on our own terms. It's still taking a bit of practice but it's a handy skill. It's also becoming pretty apparent that we actually have a pretty decent amount of burst if we can co-ordinate target swaps efficiently but it's quite hard actually keeping both of us on the same target for long periods of time due to how vulnerable we are to CC.

All in all though its a fun comp and definitely workable enough to get a few conquest points each week. At some point I would like to try prot/prot instead of arms to see how it goes, our burst would go down a lot but it would be fun to see how much staying power we could get.

Standing outside org watching people duel and commenting on a Blood DK (who usually plays Unholy) at how he's just tanking people down and saying I like his style! More random talks and we thought, hey let's try some 2's for lols! Blood DK and Prot Paladin...

We never expected that it could actually be as viable as it was...

We only played 6 games at around 1700 rating, but out of 6 games we won all of them. Double DPS is just silly, we chew them up and let our diseases and censure do the rest. Healer DPS is a bit interesting but we don't have any close calls because the DK can take care of himself pretty well, and I can take care of myself also. We're both rocking roughly 3k Resil and with the new glyph of Dark Succor, the DK healing on Death Strike is intense. The daze on AS is finally off the DR and can be used to keep people perma slowed. Between Chains, Justice (on druids and enhance shammys - try and kite me with your wolves up now!), AS, HoJ, Death Grip and a whole host of other annoying abilities we just keep someone perma locked in close quarters.

Had a pretty epic game against a Paladin Warrior team, but in the end the Paladin was just going oom and couldn't keep up with the stuns and silences. It's so funny when they try dpsing the DK and can't outdamage his Death Strike heals and Blood Shield, then they switch to me and I just go WoG mode and spam self heal with SoI and rotating cooldowns where required, as the Vengeance builds up I sit at like 60% life and it won't drop because of the scaling. The Blood Worms do so much healing over the long run it's just silly.

Gonna stick with this combo in 2's since the DK already has a 2k+ 3's team and doesn't really do 2's. I'd be interested to see how far we can actually take it, but overall it's rather silly being able to just wail on people without much they can do back to us. When we go for burst we pop wings and use Dancing Rune weapon to stack Necrotic Strikes and just smash stuff good. The best part about the combo is that we both have Vengeance, and as it builds... CRIKEY IT'S GOOD! Had a couple of 15k Crusader Strikes on Clothies!

Gárrosh wrote:You have rung a bell which cannot be unrung. Gladiator Astral and The Scum Cleave are an unstoppable juggernaut of oppression. Can you stop an unstoppable juggernaut of oppression? No you can't it's unstoppable.

Vort wrote:Blood Shield, then they switch to me and I just go WoG mode and spam self heal with SoI and rotating cooldowns where required, as the Vengeance builds up I sit at like 60% life and it won't drop because of the scaling.

Yep. This is just silly.

While we get our arses handed to us in 3v3 (two members at 1300 resil doesn't help) some 2v2 fights turn out fun. Fun in the sense that my partner goes down like a ton of bricks and I'm left with two melee dps. If they're the non-self-healing kind it's about a 50% chance I'll take both out in the end.

It should be noted that I'm stacking resilience with the fanaticism I'm stacking CTC while tanking, and now sit on over 3700 resil.

Just for lulz I'm going to be going this way as well, together with a mate, in 2v2s.

Does anyone have any ideas on the usefulness of PotI as a talent (post-nerf) in this situation? I'm thinking it could be handy or quite pants, but it would entail me having to forego three of the talent points you would normally take in Ret (toss up between PoJ and Rule of Law). Any thoughts?

Hi everyone, here in the Pally community.I just wanted to put in my 2 cents as a Prot Paladin PVPer solely doing PVP a little under the last 2 months.So far it's been extremely fun, random BG's, and 2's arena teams. Rated BG's have been more of a pain in the ass.Sort of like the raiding level for PVP, where every player has to be 3000+ pvp with 2000+ arena team rating, and the best player in the class ever.I'd rather just play and have fun, and try to deal with the bumps in the road.Anyways, I do want to give my point of view on Prot PVPing, as most people in this discussion thread, don't know many prot pvpers in Cata 4.0.6,or they used to Prot PVP in previous expansions, patches, and arena seasons.

A lot of my prot pally stats and customizations were based on Taugrimm's website. www.taugrim.comHe has many extensive videos, detailed posts and analysis, and a plethora of avid Pally PVPers (and teammates of Prot PVPers) who make quite a nice community.

I think the problem that a lot of people have with Prot Pally PVPers, is because they are considered a DPS spec, but they cannot keep up in terms of DPS with other pure DPS PVPers such as rogues, feral druids, DKs, etc. That may be true, but we bring plenty of other attributes to the table which I believe make Prot Paladin in arena 2's or 3's, a capable and viable option. Our DG (Divine Guardian), Hand of Freedom, Hand of Sacrifice, Hand of Protection, and 3 HOP WOGs, are great for mitigation and mana-free healing. In 2's, I make it a priority to stun and slow down whoever's targeting my teammate, and keep an eye on my teammate at all times, so i can instant wog him often, and when he needs it, Divine Plea (cancel to lose the 50% healing nerf), and then heal my teammate again. I always try to WOG as much as possible early in the match, cause often, the other team doesn't try to tunnel me since I am more difficult to kill.

Usually, if the enemy team attacks me, then we'll survive and be able to mow down one of their players. I'll just pop CDs back to back while I continue to WoG myself, using stuns, rebuke, etc. and my teammate and I should have no problem on them. So of course, the other team rarely goes after me. If this is a problem for you as a prot pally. Make your decision on who to attack with your teammate, and always charge in and attack first, with your teammate behind you. Players will have a tendency to go after you since you're the closer enemy to them.;

My teammates usually consist of a Unholy DK or a Fury Warrior, so it's nice to have a dps teammate who can burst very well. Anyways, the Prot Paladin must mitigate damage to his teammate or to himself, in order to survive a match. Once we get down to 2v1, we'll never lose with my heals and wogs. Anyways, Prot Paladins must understand their dps role is primary, but not exclusive. Sometimes healing your teammate with divine lights, or anything else will help. Our worst problem is when we face 2 casters like a lock/mage, or a combination of the sort. Frost Mage/HPally is damn near impossible, and pretty frustrating.

Anyways, if people understand that having a prot pally as a primary DPSer, but also as a damage mitigating and off-healing teammate, than i think people will be more open to playing with them. Yes it is difficult for Prot Pallys to gear up, and we definitely need to increase our DPS. However, I believe it is a fun and capable class to play as or with.

I only started pvp gearing once cata hit, and I'm currently in all 352's, and the conquest wep/shield.I'm currently at 3400 Resil, about 8.5% crit, 5% hit.

As of now, I don't have any other Honor Gears to buy. I am currently waiting until next Tuesday, to get the 2-handed conquest weaponI'm gonna test out the 2-hand protadin spec (macro 1-hand/shield swap right after an ability use, and can macro switch weapons in the middle of a GCD, so not to use it. Doable, but difficult and must need a lot of practice) If the 2-hand protadin spec is only viable in BG's and not Arena, then I'll probably refund it.However, since I have no other items to get with honor points, I'm thinking of buying up the rest of my holy pvp set. I currently have the shoulder and legs (I did the double resil boost gearing early with low resil, but it hasn't made much sense lately since my STR is too low when I bump up to 3800 resil (from 3400).

Even though I haven't tried Holy Pally PVP yet, I think it makes a lot of sense if I want to further our 2's group. I can switch from protadin PVPer to HPally PVPer which could definitely mess up some teams that we face on the same day. Also, since I have nothing else to buy, I was thinking I might as well buy up the HPally set, since HPally's are so buff and probably the best single player healers right now. Tell me what you guys think about my Prot Pally, and also my ideas with possibly trying 2H Protadin, and also HPally dual speccing to Prot PVP and Holy PVP. Also, in what other ways can I upgrade my Prot PVP set? I feel like I've hit my gear ceiling, and other than waiting on conquest points, there's not much more for me to do.

calixcloud wrote:I'm gonna test out the 2-hand protadin spec (macro 1-hand/shield swap right after an ability use, and can macro switch weapons in the middle of a GCD, so not to use it. Doable, but difficult and must need a lot of practice)

I did some initial testing with 2H prot vs 1H prot, and it seemed to be pretty much a wash in terms of damage done. This was not with epic weapons, and was before they buffed CS. I felt substantially squishier -- half the armor -- and was unable to use Avenger's Shield tosses on healers when it procced. I missed that a lot. I suppose that if you're not being focused, the damage issue is less of one, but I really felt the loss of the shield toss for dealing with healers.

I believe we lose white damage when we change weapons, as it resets our swing. I could be wrong. Given how big the white hits are on a 2H, you could potentially lose a fair amount when swapping in a shield. That said, the CSes are *large* so it may not matter.

Give it a shot with 2H and tell us how it goes. I've wanted to try it, but don't have a 359 weapon. I imagine having two different CS macros and maybe two different AS macros would help -- so you can CS with the 2H twice, and then do CD/swap, ShoR/swap, CS, and use a CS/swap macro when you get a Grand Crusader proc. Tell us how it affects your burst damage -- if the damage is enough to do that, it might be viable even with an opposing healer. (It helps that your partner has a way to reduce healing or also interrupt healers. Mine has a harder time.)

It is an interesting tought. As for the lack of abilities we can use wielding a 2hander, why not just macro a weaponswap with AS? As far as te blue-2hander goes: think its still a viable way to test it on some dummies and check recount. CS's are the biggest chunk of my total damage done in arena. I dont think it will improve our burst by alot but might improve our sustained damage if we dont get focused on. A swap to an action bar with 2h-switchmacroes for when you dont get focused on pretty much negates the lack of armor since you can just swap to sword and board in those situations.Might be an interesting tought to start out with a 2h to fool them thinking youre ret so they focus on us instead of our 2v2 partners. I might actually try it with a blue weapon versus a dummy/BG to see how the switching will workout.

Also, what are your toughts on conquest points guys? I run around with 7 parts vicious, the rest is all honor gear. Somehow it feels a bit of a waste to upgrade pvp-blues to pvp-purples. I worked much harder for the blues! Especially the parts with haste/expertise which arent well itemized. If the 2handed thing seems viable I got something to aim for again but I might as well stack points... Not sure what for tho